


Longtime Watchers

by proser132



Category: Rise of the Guardians (2012)
Genre: Fluff, M/M, because i'm pretty sure i'm never going to get over Aster ever, if that's not your thing, it's okay to give this a miss, more character study things, pretty nsfw near the end so, what are spirits made of anyway
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-12
Updated: 2015-10-12
Packaged: 2018-04-26 01:52:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,837
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4985398
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/proser132/pseuds/proser132
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>'I s'pose,' Aster said, and finished his tea. 'A bloody bizarre bizzo, if ye ask me.'<br/>'Which is why you are one asking questions,' Nick said sagely, and Aster threw a bikkie at his head.</p>
<p>E. Aster Bunnymund isn't stupid, not by a long shot. Some things just come flying out of left field. (Sometimes literally.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Longtime Watchers

**Author's Note:**

> um. hi.
> 
> So I did another thing. Which is hella character-study-ish. With porn. Sooooooooo I think i've found my niche? Possibly?
> 
> I did my best to separate out the nsfw into its own section, but the section immediately after isn't too explicit. It does, however, have important dialogue. Darn it. If you don't want to read the explicit stuff, stop reading at 'Don't think I didn't know what ye were doing' and start again at 'After a moment, he cleared his throat'.
> 
> We good? Okay, let the continued showcase of Proser's regretful life choices commence!

As far as Jack Frost was concerned, there was nothing so wonderful as the last few nights of autumn. It was when he began to really work, to spread winter in as wide a net as he could cast, and even eleven years into this new gig, it still left him giddy. The sensation of Joy that followed first snowfalls and last minute snowdays was difficult to describe. He'd still not managed to find words to do it justice, so he kept it to himself, but someday he thought he might be able to finally relate it to someone. He could think of a good candidate to hear it first, too.

He floated lazily over Las Condes in Santiago, spreading frost wherever he went. He knew to be careful (it was still autumn, after all, no matter what the crispness of the air said, and many people below still weren't ready for the full monty). But he could leave tangible promises, frost on windowsills and tiny icicles from the roofs, and it was still early in the night, barely nine. They'd grow in his absence, spreading out farther than his personal touch. It would be beautiful in the moonlight. He'd make sure of it.

' _¡_ _Mire, mama!_ _¡_ _Juan Hielo!_ _¡_ _Juan Hielo!_ '

Jack twisted midair, looking below: a young boy leaned out of the third story window, the light of the moon washing out his dark skin and hair to a silver glow. Jack waved, and the kid's face lit up before waving back shyly. The boy's mother dragged him back in, scolding him about the dangers of falling and ice and catching cold. The Spanish was a bit beyond Jack, still, but he knew what scolding sounded like in any language. The kid hollered ' _¡_ _Buenas noches, Juan Hielo!_ ' before the window clicked shut, and Jack laughed.

Flying a short distance away, he eyed San Marcos carefully. The big church deserved a more personal touch, and he breathed out between his two hands; flowers bloomed in the ice, tiny rosettes and forget me nots, languid heliotrope and a few sprays of baby's breath. He laughed again. That had been happening a lot, lately. No matter where he was, flowers and leaves seemed to sprawl under his hands.

He smiled a bit, and took off, leaving the frost garden to grow its way across Santiago. He passed more than a few of Tooth's fairies, and waved at them as well. Their mother was somewhere in Africa tonight, so he wouldn't see her, but he did like the fairies on their own merit. Baby Tooth wasn't among the batch either, and so he let them nuzzle his hands and chirp in his ear before continuing north and to the east.

He passed the great mountains that marked Chile's borders, the high spires of rock and ice glimmering, and he dusted them in hello as he went. The little sprites who made mountains home danced beneath the snowfall in delight, their tiny, ice clear bodies disappearing amidst the drifts and their voices high and thin in the mountain gales. He left them to their revelry in the night time, and felt fondness for them swell in his chest. They weren't like Tooth's fairies; they didn't help him with his work, since they rarely left their mountaintops. Nevertheless, they were winter's kin, and he guessed that kind of made them his, in a way. They certainly liked him enough, with the way they would chatter and follow him around whenever he visited. Entire mountain ranges would gather when he came calling. It was kind of a nice ego boost.

He soared past Mendoza with a small handful of light flurries falling in his wake, and aimed himself south towards Ushuaia in Argentina. The city was far, the southernmost city in the world, and winter had already settled in, snug and thick on the roofs and in the streets. He had a hell of a first snow day planned for the kids there, and he couldn't wait to see their faces in the morning when they found a sudden metre or so of snow on top of what had already fallen.

He passed by Neuquén, dropping a few gentle inches of snow, and paused a moment to watch the effect. It was much warmer here than in the mountains, but no warmer than Santiago; he was careful to keep the snow mostly to the residential areas, in hopes of not causing too much trouble.

Seasons, he was learning, were not so cut and dry as the calendar dictated, and he'd spent most of his long years as a spirit in North America, where he'd only seen how seasons passed in a specific pattern. He was still learning the ways of seasons in other climes; how some trees never changed colour, how there were plains that had never seen spring, how an entire swathe of the world only saw snow rarely and many didn't have real words for winter. There were parts of the world he could visit, but had no real place in. Sometimes, there was no winter at all, just dry seasons and monsoons, and he was fascinated. He loved his own seasons, the ones he could remember, and loved to watch them play out their dramas, but he loved too all the different years that passed in different lands.

Summer sometimes sprang back with a vengeance in the middle of autumn; autumn sometimes never relinquished its hold to winter and instead bloomed anew without ever having seen ice; and these days, if winter lingered into spring...

He shook his head. Spring was about to change to summer in the north, and he had a job to do in the south. He could entertain the sort of moonlit thoughts he was having later.

A small hand tapped his shoulder and he turned, before he lit up. 'Sandy!'

Sandy smiled broadly, but a question mark leapt to golden life at a gesture, and Jack laughed a little sheepishly.

'Got things to think about,' and he shrugged. 'Time to send some kids to dreamland, then, huh?'

An emphatic nod, followed by a quick flash of images: flowers, a sun, the moon superimposed over the sun, a stand of trees, a small figure sprinting –

'I know, I know,' Jack said, laughing a bit. 'Soon, right? I'll just keep trying.'

Sandy nodded again, and patted Jack's cheek before returning to his work. The grains of dreamsand fell, and looked like flakes of gold amidst the flakes of snow Jack sent scurrying after them. Sandy waved him off with another broad grin, and Jack took off again, pointing himself south.

The clouds felt soft where they crept through his clothing, the sensation incomparable and as currently indescribable as Joy. He laughed again, always laughing, peals of hysteria ringing out through the night and singing beneath the benevolent Man in the Moon.

 

 

'I don't get it, North,' Aster said as he was handed a mug of hot chocolate. He resisted the urge to wrinkle his nose at the drink; he could make a better hot chocky in his sleep. North might be the king of prezzies, but he had nothing on Aster when it came to the finer things in life.

'You do not get what, Bunny?' North asked, sitting in his own chair. For the past decade or so, they'd gotten into this habit of visiting one another during the off season, and it was nice, in a bit of a surreal way. It was like the early days again, before they became so wrapped up in the work of Guardianship that they forgot what being a Guardian meant.

Aster rolled the mug between his paws before taking a sip. 'Have ye noticed the others acting a bit...' he shifted the mug to his left and wiggled his right back and forth. 'Ye know.'

North just looked confused, and Aster knew he'd have to elaborate a bit; bloody oath, but he'd been hoping not to. He'd been thinking about it since before Easter – sometime around February – and he still wasn't sure how to phrase it.

'They just act different, sometimes,' Aster finally said. 'Take Sandy, for instance. When he stops by, he's the Sandy I've known since the bleeding Golden Age. But the other night, I clear couldn't understand a thing he was yabbering about.' He took another sip of the chocky, then set it aside before beginning to gesture in wide, sweeping movements. 'And Tooth gets all – manic, I think's the word – talks so fast I'm not sure _she_ even knows what she's saying. They act funny, is what I'm trying to say.' He scowled and crossed his arms. 'Maybe I'm just noticing it now.'

'Finally, I hear you plain,' North said. 'You do not understand how Night works, then. This is clear to me.'

'What are ye on about?'

'Your holiday is in day, Bunny,' North began. 'My holiday is in night, see? And even I do not fully understand. But the others, they work almost solely at night, and the night? Very different from the day.' North chuckled, but there was a dark, unknown edge that Aster wasn't used to hearing. 'The night makes us different people.'

'What does that even mean?' Aster demanded, scowling still.

'We called it moonmad, many years ago,' North replied, and the far off cast to his gaze told Aster that he meant the time before he was a Guardian. 'The night is different world – it does not follow rules of waking world. Night is where magic lives. Is it so strange that in a different world, things behave differently?' He shook his massive head like a dog shakes off water. 'Do not worry so, Bunny. Our friends are as they should be – all is well.'

Aster subsided, but the curiosity that now crouched in his breast remained.

 

 

Really, he shoulda known North wouldn't keep his fat mouth shut. He had more of a taste for goss than the nosiest fisho's cook, and Aster cursed himself for a fool twice over.

Why else would Tooth show up at dusk, grinning fey beneath the moon's last quarter and daring him to a race for teeth through southern Asia?

'It will be fun, Bunny!' She exclaimed, tugging on his arm. 'Come on, it's been years!'

'The last time wasn't exactly for the giggles, mate,' he pointed out.

'We had fun anyway, didn't we?' she said impishly, and tugged harder. 'I've got my fairies as helpers, which seemed a bit unfair, so I got Jack to agree! Come on already, it'll be great!'

'Ye did _what_?'

'Oh, don't be like that,' she scolded. 'I know you two are friends, now.'

'Course we are,' Aster said, voice gruff in his discomfort. 'I'm not slagging the bloke, I just want to know what brought this on, is all.'

Tooth smiled again, but it was a touch sheepish. 'Nick might have mentioned something,' she hedged.

'I'll just bet he did,' Aster said darkly. The faint scent of ice and dead, wet leaves drifted past his nose, and it twitched, his ears cocking in the scent's direction.

'Oh, good, thought I might be late,' Jack Frost said, tumbling out of the sky and landing neatly beside Tooth. It was downright unnatural, the way he went from airborne tangle of limbs to a very human grace. 'Can't let you get a headstart,' he added, elbowing Tooth fondly. 'You're such a cheater.'

Tooth's feathers puffed up in offence. 'Excuse me! Who keeps stealing one of my fairies away?!'

'Come onnnnnnn,' Jack wheedled, hopping over to Aster's side and crouching atop his staff in one smooth movement. 'Bunny and I'll need all the help we can get – you've got home advantage!'

'Speak for yerself, mate,' Aster said, and dared to jostle the staff with his foot. To his intense frustration, Jack just shifted with the movement, his balance freakish and remarkable.

'Shut up, Bun-Bun, she's already cheating, using her fairies.'

'So ye want to cheat too, that's it?' Aster asked, flattening his ears innocently.

'It's not cheating if everyone's doing it. Everyone knows that.'

'Fine,' Tooth relented, which Aster was relieved to hear. Otherwise, they might have spent all night standing here while he and Jack bickered. 'But only Baby Tooth! We'll be starting in New Delhi and fanning out from there. Borders are Beijing to the east and Istanbul to the west. Any teeth from outside the area don't count!'

'What do we get if we win?' Jack said, gesturing between himself and Aster.

'Some peace and quiet?' Aster grumbled, only half-serious; their good mood was infectious, and his own competitive nature was awakening in response to the challenge.

'How about bragging rights for a year?' Tooth offered, and Aster snorted.

'Yer kidding, right?'

'Come on, Bunny,' Jack said, spinning around to face him. 'Trust me, I'll make it worth your while.'

Aster tensed: there it was, hiding in Jack's voice and Tooth's smile. The moonmadness, the strange darkness that so put him on edge. Jack knocked their shoulders together in companionable encouragement, and Aster sighed deeply.

He was never going to figure it out by hiding in his Warren.

'Fine, but I meant it about the peace and quiet,' he said.

Jack whooped in glee and Tooth clapped her hands together, doing a little twirl. 'You two ready then?'

'Need a ride, Cottontail?' Jack asked, the Wind perking up.

Aster laughed. 'Buckley's chance,' he said, and tapped twice. 'See you in New Delhi, mate.' The hole opened up beneath him, and he dropped down just as Jack's Wind reached for him.

He sprinted, taking longer strides and greater leaps, the scent of the tunnels becoming heavier with rain as he neared the destination. He popped up in a back alley, and leapt up onto the rooftops. In a moment, Jack joined him, dropping out of the sky to hover at his side.

'Get a move on,' Aster advised, and took off.

Later, when Aster tried to remember the race, it wouldn't be a complete memory. Instead it came to him in flashes of images, each one rich and vibrant in his mind's eye:

In and out of bedrooms like a fish in water. Children's sleeping faces, soft in the darkness. Tooth after tiny tooth, full of memories, full of light. Laughter riding on the Wind. And always above them, the unwavering Moon.

 

 

Aster dropped his final bag in Tooth Palace, proud of the size. He'd snagged Seoul before the fairies got too much of a head start, and while they had numbers, he had speed. It had been an even match.

'Oh my god,' Jack said as he fell to a stop beside Aster. 'Kabul was a _nightmare_. Baghdad went okay, though.'

He dropped a sizeable bag of his own atop their pile, and eyed Tooth's speculatively. Aster judged it to be a mite smaller than theirs, and snorted. 'Not really home advantage if ye keep getting distracted,' he remarked as Tooth flitted into the room.

'Oh, drat,' Tooth said.

'Yes!' Jack shouted, leaping up and punching the air. 'Told you all we needed was Baby Tooth!'

Tooth rolled her eyes, but she looked a bit too pleased for someone who had just lost a race on her own turf. 'Congratulations, you guys,' she said good-naturedly. 'Bragging rights for a year are all yours.'

'And me peace and quiet?' Aster said, eyebrows raised high and one ear cocked to the side. Tooth sighed, the sound of someone who had known Aster way too long for comfort.

'Yes, yes,' she said, 'No unexpected visits for a year, either, save for emergencies.'

'No promises from me,' Jack said, grinning widely. 'I'm on the winning side, I don't have to say anything.' He tilted his head to the side, squinting in the dawn's light. 'Actually, does that mean I get the opposite? As many unexpected visits as I want for a year?'

'Oh, no, ye don't –' Aster started, just as Tooth chirped, 'Done!'

He turned and glared at her, but she looked utterly unrepentant. 'It'll be good for you,' she said, 'having some surprises around. Besides, Spring is the season of Change, yes? Maybe this will remind you of it!'

Aster huffed, unable to argue against his own season, but annoyed, nonetheless. 'Ye're an interfering stickybeak, ye are,' he said. 'See if I come along to yer next race.'

'Oh, you will,' she laughed. 'I can't imagine you'd ever turn down an opportunity to run like that. You never have before.'

'Normally I'm not doing yer job for ye,' he sniped, but she wasn't wrong, and they both knew it. Jack just stood off to the side and looked absolutely rapt with how everything was turning out, judging from his smirk. 'If ye mess up me Warren...' Aster warned.

'Not in the plans, Bunny,' Jack said.

'What plans?'

'Wouldn't you like to know?' Jack said with a wink, and laughed at the way Aster's face scrunched up. 'Oops, looks like Christchurch could use another inch or so,' he said, turning his head to the southeast. 'I'll see you guys later! Wind, let's go!'

The Wind answered enthusiastically, nearly toppling Aster over in its haste, and he shouted after him, 'Watch where ye put that, ye dero!'

Jack's only answer was another laugh, and Aster scowled as Tooth joined in.

 

 

Aster decided to try running during the night, without anyone around. The Moon was dark and gone in the sky, but he'd always been able to pick it out no matter what phase it was in. The void it left in the sky, filled with no stars, was unmistakeable.

The bush was wide and vast, and he ran where he wished – past Uluru on to little stretches of outback that no human had stepped foot in for thousands of years. There were hidden pockets of land all over the world, always had been: some protected by magic, like his Warren, and some simply kept back for the sake of their beauty, held in trust by Mother Earth. They were each safe havens for the spirits and magical folk of the world, and it was in one of these that Aster finally took a smoko, sitting down and watching the tiny pond cradled in the centre.

Beneath the water, little lights swam, glittering like fairy lights. Glowfish, bright and heedless of the world above, lived their lives here and had done so for as long as there had been glowfish. This was one of the pockets kept safe for beauty's sake, and it had been a very long time since he'd visited it last.

A sense of peace pervaded the hollow, but it didn't reach Aster. He tried to feel different in the night air. He wondered how he would even measure that, calculate a difference in self like that. He looked away from the pond at last and peered up at the sky, hoping to sense something of the dark changes he'd seen in his friends.

Dark was the wrong word, he thought after a moment where he stubbornly remained the same (no surprise there). Dark evoked memories of Pitch, a decade lost and lurking in the underside of the earth, far deeper than Aster's Warren or tunnels would ever reach. His friends hadn't gone darker, they'd gone _sharper_ somehow, closer to something he didn't understand.

_I'm too bloody old to not understand basic things like this_ , he thought crossly. But Nick couldn't explain it, Jack would laugh him off, and Tooth probably had no idea she was different in the night. She had a perceptiveness to her that was mostly inconvenient to everyone but her, but it didn't often extend to herself, in Aster's experience.

But there was one person Aster could ask, who would neither laugh nor misunderstand. The only damn person on the planet who was older than Aster was.

He stood, and went to find Sandy.

 

 

He caught up with Sandy on the far side of the world. He'd sprinted east towards North America, where it would be early evening by the time he arrived, and popped up in the Southwest. Here, it was the height of summer, and the heat was like a second coat of fur on top of Aster's pelt. It was nothing to January in the Outback, though, so he shook it off like water and began to follow the streams of golden stardust back to its source.

Sandy floated above Phoenix, directing the sand with the quiet sort of happiness that Aster was glad to see again. It had taken five years after their showdown for Sandy to return to a semblance of normal. He'd been friends with Pitch before he was Pitch Black – no matter his duty, it would always hurt to have the face of one of your oldest friends betray you, harm your friends, and be dragged down into the darkness of the earth.

'Oi,' Aster called, leaping to the top of an office building. 'Ye got a second?'

Sandy nodded cheerfully and descended, landing softly on the roof with a little poof of dust. He flashed a question mark, and tilted his head to the side.

'I've just got some questions I was hoping ye'd answer.'

Above his head, Sandy displayed a quick series of four images: a moon, a tooth, a snowflake, and a candy cane.

'Exactly,' Aster said, less annoyed than relieved that Sandy already knew, and he wouldn't have to explain further. 'I'm just not getting it, and to be honest, it's starting to make me feel like I've got roos loose in the top paddock.'

Sandy nodded and smiled, before forming another series: a sun, an egg, then something that looked like a forward slash off a keyboard, followed by a moon and a snowflake.

Aster frowned. 'I know I'm a daylight kind of bloke,' he said. 'Comes with the job description.'

Sandy rolled his eyes, and his next image was larger, more demonstrative than his usual shorthand. In it, on the right side stood a tiny Aster, beneath a sun. A little swirl of golden dust mimicked sun rays, and beneath their touch, the tiny Aster grew and hopped around energetically. On the left side, a proportionally smaller Jack, complete with teeny shepherd's crook, stood beneath a moon. Sandy had clearly selected the paler grains of sand for this side, because the moon was near white; like before, a little dust swirl represented moonlight, and again, the figure grew, flying about and silently laughing.

'So ye're saying that the day energises me, where the night energises the others?'

Sandy nodded, then shook his head, in the characteristic movement he had for when someone was being particularly slow on the uptake. The image he threw into the air was once more Aster and Jack, but larger; on each of their chests hovered a sun and a moon, respectively, and Aster watched as the two figures held the little lights.

'Yer talking about centres,' Aster said at last. 'Different natures entirely.'

Sandy looked relieved, and flashed a check mark.

'And what – I'm the only Day among us?'

Sandy tilted his head to the side and flashed a hand that wobbled between a thumbs up and a thumbs down, followed be a question mark.

'No, there's nothing wrong with that,' Aster assured, but thought privately that it was a bloody lonely thing, to be the only Day.

Sandy paused, and looked thoughtful, before flashing the image of Jack again; this time, he stood alone between a large sun and moon, each equally far away. At first, the image flew towards the moon, but turned back to the sun after a moment, neither holding him too long. Aster watched silently as the little Jack became a little North, who did the same thing, pulled between the two lights.

'They're neither?' Aster guessed, and Sandy shook his head. 'They're both?'

Now Sandy grinned, and flashed a check mark again. It slid away and formed again into a sun, moon, and a new symbol, a five-pointed star; beneath the sun was an egg, beneath the moon, a tooth, and a little swirl Aster took to mean Sandy sat beneath the star. Then, beneath the sun, moon, and star was a symbol Aster couldn't puzzle out, an orb divided by a thick line. Beneath it was Jack's snowflake and North's candy cane. The orb fell into two, one a half circle resting upon the line, and the other a half circle hanging below. The snowflake danced beneath the first and the candy cane twirled beneath the second.

'I'm lost,' Aster admitted, watching as the five groupings hovered in a pentagon and a thin line of dust connected each, building a complicated star shape. Sandy huffed. He signed a sun rising above a flat horizon, then the snowflake, followed by the sun descending and a candy cane.

'Dawn and dusk, then,' Aster said. 'I'm still not understanding why it makes all ye lot go troppo, though.'

Sandy visibly gathered his patience, and Aster grimaced; he didn't mean to act like he was short a full quid, but this was far from what he knew. From what he was seeing, each of them was a separate time: he was day, Tooth was night, and Sandy was god knew what. Jack was dawn, and North was dusk. What any of that meant was beyond him.

At least each of them was a unique thing, though. He felt lonely enough, he didn't need to be the only Day in a group of Nights.

He shook the thought away as Sandy made a final attempt: a sun, a tiny Aster, and a little tropical island.

'Are ye serious?' Aster scoffed. 'I'm not the crazy one. Ye need one of those nice little hug-me jackets, ye fruit loop.'

Sandy reformed his robes into a passable imitation of a straitjacket, and Aster laughed.

 

 

Now that he had a better idea of what he was looking for, it was getting easier to notice. It wasn't quite the moonmadness Nick had said it was, because it happened moon or no, but since all of them were tied to the night in some way... Well, it made more sense, Aster supposed.

He paid more attention to himself now, watching for it; he realised one day as the sun set that his energy waxed and waned with the height of the sun. At high noon, he always felt best. The amount by which varied by the day, the cloud cover, and probably the season, he was willing to bet. He certainly still had energy when the sun went down, but it was somehow lesser. The heaviness of the day – and Day was more solid, more substantial than Night, he noted – would pull back into the fainter pressure of the night, and with it went some part of him that didn't return until the sun rose again.

It was disconcerting, to have never noticed something so intrinsic to himself. He'd never been much for the introspective side of things – intellectual, certainly (he may run around like a wild thing in his old age, but he still kept the books and the artefacts in a safe space in the Warren, still had the waistcoats and sashes in a storage room, still kept the reading glasses beside his nest beside any old text he was reading), but not really examining himself. It was hard to want to put the energy into examining his own thoughts. Aster preferred thinking about solid things, for the most part, and not the abstraction that was thinking about himself.

He had more than dabbled in philosophy in his youth, though, and now the voice that was distinctly E. Aster Bunnymund (not only Bunny, or Aster) was very primly calling himself a deadset dill, for being so thick for so long.

'Wow, something's got  _ your  _ panties in a twist.'

Aster started; he'd been so lost in thought that he'd not smelled Jack on the Wind or heard the faint sound of leaves crackling that always seemed to follow him. He turned, and Jack was waiting, a strange look on his face that quickly melted away, like ice in full sunlight.

'You alright, Bun?'

'I'm fine,' Aster said, distracted by trying to figure out Jack's expression; finally, he reckoned it wasn't really any of his business, and drew his ears forward in reluctant curiosity. 'What are ye here for?'

'Cashing in one of my infinite unexpected visits,' Jack shrugged. 'It's only good for a year, after all.'

'Too right,' Aster said, and Jack laughed, head tossed back in the last rays of the afternoon's sunlight. The sun was dropping lower and lower with every passing day; Winter was almost fully upon Australia, so Aster supposed it made sense that Jack was here.

'Anyway, I wanted to see if you wanted to come along,' Jack said at last, still chuckling a little. 'It's gonna be a pretty sweet night – I've got a doozy planned.'

'What?' Aster asked a little blankly.

'You know, tag along, see what winter's all about,' Jack said, wiggling his fingers; a ridiculously large snowflake appeared, and he flicked it through his fingers like it was a coin. 'I'm heading out to Punta Arenes, in Chile? They've had a pretty easy winter of it so far, thought it was time the kids had a real snow day to look forward to.'

'And ye thought I'd want to come along – why, again?' Aster asked, bewildered.

Jack's face fell, and he shuffled a little, looking down at his feet. 'I dunno,' he said after a moment, 'You've been acting weird lately, and it's got the others weirded out.' He looked up again, and his face was more serious than Aster was used to seeing. 'I was worried you'd – what do you say, gone trippy? Trippo?'

'I'm not the one gone troppo,' Aster snorted. 'If anything, it's  _ ye _ ratbags, with yer shonky races and bizarro day/night Jekyll/Hyde act. I'm going mental, trying to figure it out.'

'What do you mean?' Jack said, and now he was the one who looked confused. 'Jekyll and Hyde?'

'Ye mean, ye haven't noticed?' Aster asked, and only managed to not sound patronising by reminding himself that he hadn't noticed it and it had clearly been going on for billions of years. 'Yer different in the night, Frostbite. Ye all are.'

'And you're not?' Jack pointed out. 'If we act different during the day, why wouldn't you act different at night?'

Aster frowned hard. 'I don't think I am,' he said slowly. 'I still feel like me.'

'Well, you would, wouldn't you?' Jack laughed again. 'Acting different doesn't mean you're a different  _ person _ . Everyone knows that.'

'Ye with the “everyone” again,' Aster said, a bit sharpish. 'Ye assume I think that. And it's been getting stronger lately, Frost. More obvious.'

'I know,' Jack admitted. 'But...' he paused, then shrugged, as if words had escaped him. 'It's not important. We're all still friends. Things just change sometimes. The world is getting brighter, I think. We're all changing to accommodate it.'

'That doesn't unnerve ye?'

'Why should it?' Jack said flippantly. 'I changed pretty majorly in the first place, this isn't too much.'

Aster's ears laid flat at the reminder. Of them all, Jack was the only one who had died to become who he was. Everyone else had just subtly changed, become different, and that was what had marked the transition from person to spirit. Aster had only noticed himself when he realised his markings on his fur had become more defined, more patterned. His forehead markings had changed entirely. But Jack had suffered to get where he was, and suffered another three hundred years of worse than animosity – just plain indifference. Aster supposed that after a big change like befriending the Guardians and becoming one himself, this would be nothing.

'Which change are ye referring to?' Aster said, a bit hesitant.

Jack flashed a grin, but it was a little sharper than Aster was comfortable with. 'Both of them, duh.'

Aster reached out without thinking, laying a paw on Jack's shoulder. 'Sorry,' he said. 'I've been a bit of a ratbag meself, haven't I?'

'A little worse,' Jack said, pinching the air between his forefinger and thumb. 'Closer to a jackass.'

Aster winced.

Jack laughed, and stuck his own hand on Aster's shoulder in solidarity. 'It's all good, Bun-bun,' he said, and shoved Aster a little. 'Now are you coming or not?'

'Sure,' Aster agreed, and Jack's face lit up like the sun rising. 'Meet ye there?'

'Buckley's chance you are,' Jack mocked with a grin that promised the worst kind of trouble, and Aster tensed. 'WIND!'

'Wait, no, no,  _ no no no  _ -'

The Wind flung him skyward, and Aster was unashamed to say he screamed.

 

 

'Never again,' Aster said, spread-eagle on the ground in an effort to touch as much of it as possible, completely disregarding the thick layer of snow in the way. 'I will hunt ye down, Frost, don't think I wont –'

'Pity,' Jack said, the strange look making a return as he lounged against his staff, watching Aster with the same grin he'd worn when he scooped Aster up. 'I'd hate for you to get up right now.'

Aster cocked an ear in Jack's direction and scowled up at the sky. 'What's that mean, dero?'

'Oh, nothing,' Jack said airily. 'You just look really – comfortable. Only missing one thing, I think.'

'If it's snow, Jack, I will job ye, and I will  _ break yer arm _ , just see if I won't,' Aster snarled. Jack eased away slowly, grin still firmly planted on his face but definitely putting distance between them.

'You got it, Aster, no more snow,' Jack promised, and Aster squinted at the formality before nodding. Jack was clearly serious, and Aster let himself be pulled to his feet by small, strong hands. He shook off the snow, brushing it off where it was stuck around his bracers and bandoleer; when he looked up again, Jack was watching. 'Let's get this shindig started, huh?' Jack said, looking up into the sky, and Aster couldn't tell if it was necessary for what he wanted to do, or to look away from Aster.

'Not much I can do here, Frostbite,' he said slowly, and Jack elbowed him in the ribs, having to aim higher than he would have to for a human.

'You're not here to  _ do _ anything, Cottontail,' Jack said, rolling his eyes. 'You're here to watch. Go find a good seat, huh?'

Aster stuck his tongue out – god, the childishness Jack inspired in him – and leapt, jumping silently from roof to roof until he was perched upon a tall steeple. He nodded at the distant Jack figure, unsure if he would see it, but he saw Jack wave in answer.

Then he sat back and waited.

For a few long moments, it looked like nothing was happening at all. Aster was a Guardian not for nothing, though, and he had senses other than sight he could use.

Magic spilled into the air, lighter than the night, lighter than the moon, lighter than anything Aster had ever felt. It made him feel a little dizzy, and his chest tighten, like he wasn't getting enough air. The lightness it created drew in the heavier snowstorm, Aster realised as clouds began to gather, blocking out the first quarter moon and looking solid in a way the night did not. Jack could make snow, certainly, but it was much cleverer to draw an already established storm in as an additional sort of power cell, and a reluctant admiration rose inside Aster.

The first flakes began to drift down, and Aster caught one of the larger ones on his palm; it didn't last long, because Aster was springtime afternoons and pale, growing sunlight, and he would always be too warm for snow to last. While it rested gently in the wide grey cradle of his paw, though, he examined it. Exquisite craftsmanship as usual, he admitted grudgingly. Jack might not have ever carved them one by one out of the cloudice, but his handiwork was written all over it, as lovingly formed and released as any one of Aster's googs. And each one was unalike, Aster remembered, something about the quantum unpredictability of freezing water making it nigh impossible for there to ever be two snowflakes that were twinned in any given universe, much less any given snowstorm. He watched it melt, the same sort of aching melancholy in his breast as filled it when he watched the delicate spring flowers wilt in the summer heat. It was always a sadness when something beautiful faded.

He looked back up. Here, Jack was in his element, and it showed. He glowed in the snow, easy to pick out even as the flurry grew thicker. The Wind swirled the flakes this way and that, soft curls of air and stronger gusts of excitement, visible for a rare hour or two before it went back to being utterly invisible to the naked human eye. Jack laughed in the distance, voice ringing out like the crystal glasses Aster had once seen played as an instrument, struck with a mallet that he'd been certain would crack the surface, and instead only produced a pure note that wavered in the air long after.

Aster gave up trying to place words and images to what he was watching after a while, and chose instead to sit back and enjoy the storm.

'What do you think?' Jack said an hour later, having finished the work of the storm and left it to run its course. He floated over with a nonchalant air that had to be at least half-pretend. 'Not my best knockout, since it's only a few dozen miles wide, but hey, I think I did okay.'

'It's beautiful, Jack,' Aster said without thinking, and then mentally cursed as he backed up. 'Real beaut of a storm,' he added a bit lamely, mainly because it sounded less starstruck than before.

Jack looked pleased as a figjam in a house of mirrors, though, so Aster figured it was alright. 'Thanks, Bunny,' he said, and did two lazy loops around Aster, checking the snow with a critical eye before nodding. For some reason, Aster tensed, and couldn't imagine why. 'Yeah, I think you're right. God, it's fun to piss off the weathermen.'

Aster laughed, and his ears twitched back and forth in his mirth. 'Is that what this was all about then?' he teased. 'What about the anklebiters yer in charge of?'

'I'm definitely not in charge of anybody, Bugs,' Jack scoffed. 'Besides, it's the little things in life, right?' The smile he gave Aster was small and secretive, inviting him in to some grand joke that he didn't understand, offering to share a hidden knowledge – it was strange, is what Aster was getting at. Nevertheless, he smiled back. 'You done for the night, old man, or are you up for another storm? I'm thinking Buenos Aires.'

'As long as I can get meself there, I think I can do that,' Aster said, and he felt his smile take on an edge that he'd only ever seen on the other Guardians. 'As long as ye can keep up, little tot.'

Jack scowled. 'Three. Hundred. Twenty. Eight. How many times do I have to say it?'

'I'm older than the planet, mate,' Aster said, mild as milk. 'Me hearing's going.' He dropped into a tunnel just as Jack opened his mouth to argue, and laughed the whole way to Buenos Aires, even as he shook snow out of his fur.

 

 

'And how is my furry friend this winter afternoon?'

'It's never winter down here in the Warren, ye know that,' Aster said, setting a cup of goldenrod tea in front of Nick.

'That's not what I hear,' Nick said with a smile, 'but point is made. You are avoiding question. How are you?'

'I'm managing,' Aster replied, frowning. 'Why, what's got ye worried?'

'Nothing, Bunny,' Nick said, but leaned forward with a familiar twinkle in his eye. 'I have heard you have been much busier of late than is normal for you. Is fun, da?'

'Ye could have warned a bloke that ye were setting them on me,' Aster said crossly. 'It's been mad. First there was the race with Tooth – ye know I'm always happy to help out, but we haven't done a race since Pitch. I wasn't sure she'd ever want to again, to be honest.'

'It was fun,' Nick said wistfully. Then he scowled at Aster. 'Even though you set fire to my coat.'

'All's fair,' Aster said, smiling at the memory.

'Love and war, yes, yes,' Nick scoffed.

'And then Frostbite claimed unlimited access to me Warren for the next year,' Aster continued, frowning again. 'I'm never going to have me peace back. Then, the other night, he dragged me all over South America, making storms and nearly freezing me bits off. So, no. I'd not exactly call it fun, North.'

'Again, not what these ears have heard,' Nick said, and swallowed nearly half his cuppa. 'Sandy says you were asking about natures of Guardians, yes?'

'I was,' Aster admitted easily. 'I never really noticed it. Strewth, but I felt like a no-hoper when I found out. How do ye not notice something like that?' He tightened his paw into a fist and knocked his own skull gently. 'Bit slow in my old age.'

'You're not old, Bunny,' Nick snorted.

'Older than the planet, mate.'

'She's a young planet,' Nick argued.

Aster acknowledged the excellent point with a flicked finger, and sipped at his tea again. 'So, Dusk,' he said, and laughed at Nick's good-natured scowl. 'Ye want to tell me more? Ye know that Sandy can be a bit abstract.'

'Ah, you are at last asking right questions,' Nick said with the same delight that he approached any new subject. 'We all have many connections, and way we relate to time is but one. All spirits are made of these associations. For instance, Sandy is midnight – witching hour, I think Americans call it. High magic, dreaming and creating from mind.'

'That's what the star meant,' Aster said, and shrugged. 'And you? Dusk?'

'Endings,' Nick said promptly. 'And beginnings, in many ways. And continuations, mostly. Anticipation. Transition from day to night, transitions of all kinds, such as from childhood to adulthood! But a constant there – wonder remains, no matter how old we get.'

'I see.' Aster worried at his lower lip for a moment, and hid it behind his cup. Then, as casually as he could make it, 'The others? Night, Day?' A pause he didn't mean to take. 'Dawn?'

Nick was smiling. 'Night is mystery,' he said, 'and is Tooth's domain. Where do fairies take teeth, children are wondering? It is unknown, and exciting. It makes them explore.' Nick leaned forward and wagged his finger in Aster's face. 'Day is honesty, and new things,' he said. 'Much like night, it incites discovery, but where night can be mysterious and exciting, it can too be confusing. Day is always honest, and clear, both to itself,' and Nick chuckled here, 'and to others.'

Aster's ears twitched in annoyance, but saying anything would spur Nick's teasing on, so he kept his silence.

'And Dawn is newness, too,' Nick said at last, when the rise he was hoping to get out of Aster didn't come. 'In different way. Day is always honest, but Dawn is discovery of falsehood, joy of truth. It's finding things out about self for first time, and becoming something new. It is moving from mystery of night and ignorance to daylight and wisdom.'

'Watch it,' Aster said, chewing over the words in his mind, 'Or I'll tell Tooth ye called her ignorant.'

'There is certain charm in not knowing,' Nick dismissed airily. 'I do not think she would take offence, if it meant that she could remind child of important things! She is happiest in what is already known, in memory, instead of making memory.'

'I s'pose,' Aster said, and finished his tea. 'A bloody bizarre bizzo, if ye ask me.'

'Which is why you are one asking questions,' Nick said sagely, and Aster threw a bikkie at his head.

 

 

'HELLOOOOOOO, WARREN!'

'By God, Frost,' Aster barked, whirling on his heel to face the distant figure. 'Can't ye make a quieter entrance?'

'I thought I'd announce this visit!' Jack shouted back, soaring with all the speed of an oncoming blizzard and laughing through a wide smile. 'Didn't think you'd prefer them unannounced, I'll remember for next time!'

'Oi, slow down,' Aster said as Jack flew closer. Jack did no such thing. 'I said slow _down_ , Frostb–'

Jack approached at top speed and spun a series of dizzying loops around Aster, spiralling up into the air with the grace of a figure skater before finally wobbling to a stop. Aster stumbled a bit in the slipstream, and scowled. 'What on me good green earth was that for? Ye didn't have to bail me up to get me attention.'

'It's way more fun this way, though,' Jack said, floating gently down until his feet touched the grass. 'Your faces are priceless.'

'So ye've said, ye great big dropkick,' Aster snorted. 'What can I do for ye?'

Jack eyed him and then giggled. 'Nothing, Bun-Bun,' he said, struggling through laughter that had a strange tinge of wistfulness. 'I'm just here to visit, really. Thought you could show me around – I haven't spent a lot of time here, and I thought it'd be cool to see.'

'Ye want to see the Warren?' Aster said, a bit flummoxed. 'Why? It's not within cooee of yer usual scenery.'

'I like flowers,' Jack said simply, like that shouldn't be a big revelation to anyone, when in fact it was a big bloody revelation. 'I don't get to see a lot of them in my line of work. Winter's kind of a graveyard shift, you know,' he said, and laughed at Aster's scowl. 'God, I love that joke. Never gets old. Anyway, I thought you could show me what you're growing right now.'

'If ye're sure,' Aster replied slowly, 'I'd be happy to, Frostbite.'

'Thanks!' Jack said, grinning ear from ear. 'Show me what you've got!'

Aster loped nice and easy towards the first of his twelve garden plots, hiding his frown by keeping his head down. Jack flew beside him, looking quite content. It unnerved Aster a touch, but what was he going to do, kick Jack out? Over something so small? The bloke just asked to see the flowers, and Aster wasn't exactly the person who could judge him for that.

They came to the little ledge that overlooked the first plot, and Aster opened his mouth to say something – he later couldn't recall what – but was interrupted by Jack's sharp intake of breath.

Aster twisted his head to look at him, and was struck a little dumb at the look of _joy_ on Jack's face. 'Frostbite?'

'I didn't think it would look like this,' Jack whispered. His eyes were wide, and his right hand spasmed a bit towards the garden, before clenching into a fist and jerking back to his side. He floated tentatively forwards, and Aster watched him go.

He supposed Jack _wouldn't_ have seen something like this before; no Earth garden was shaped like his, though the closest was perhaps Mexico City's old floating gardens. The River of Colouring spilled into a delta and spread out into tributaries, leaving little islands surrounded by trickles of a single colour. He had other plots, but this one was one of his favourites. He'd planted as many white flowers as he could find, and the river of dye changed the way they grew until there were shades there was no single word for. There were flowers the gentle yellow of a precisely cooked hard-boiled yolk, and flowers the colour of mountains misted over during autumn; flowers as palely blue as shadows on snow, and flowers as brilliantly red as a strontium chloride flame. Jack hovered above them, keeping an obvious distance from the plants, and looked around with a wonder Aster would bet North could feel from the Pole.

'Ye can touch them, ye know,' Aster said, finally walking forwards. Jack flinched, as if he'd forgotten Aster was there, then turned a rueful gaze in his direction.

'I really can't,' Jack said quietly. 'I'll kill them. Frost and spring flowers, you know.'

'Spring isn't as delicate as ye seem to think it is, Jack,' Aster said, finally reaching him (though Jack floated about three feet above him). 'These flowers won't die. Not while I'm here. And even if ye do frost 'em over,' he added at Jack's uncertain look, 'I can fix em. No dramas, yeah?'

'Are you sure?' Jack said, and a hope as trembling as a field's first shoot radiated from him. Aster had no idea how most of the other Guardians experienced what they guarded; he knew North felt Wonder like sugar crystals in his mouth, because North had told him. For Aster, Hope felt like late afternoon sunlight on his fur, and right now it was warmer than he'd felt in a long time.

'Absolutely,' Aster said, and smiled. 'Get down here, Jack.'

Jack landed gingerly, and with one last look at Aster, reached out and ran his finger over a violently blue lily of the valley.

Aster could feel where Jack's ice wanted to frost over the petals as if Jack's hand was touching _him_ , and he shivered before he could stop _._ It was a matter of little consequence to put some of the warmth of Jack's hope into the flower, and so he did, turning the touch of cold into a much more gentle dew.

The sensation was one Aster had never felt before, but he wasn't left with any time to examine it. Jack laughed in delight, whirling on Aster with a look in his eyes that was far more than simple gratitude, but Aster had no better word for it.

'This is the _best_ ,' Jack declared, and Aster didn't have the time to brace himself before Jack flung his arms over Aster's shoulders and hugged him tightly. He gingerly returned the hug after a long moment, and then Jack stepped back, still grinning like a shot fox. 'How many other gardens do you have? There's no way this is the only one.'

Aster couldn't help smiling at the enthusiasm, and Jack beamed back. He took to the air again, but this time it wasn't in fear that he'd destroy the plants. Aster felt his eyes crinkle with the force of his grin. 'Come on then, ye bleeding dero,' he said, 'and lemme show ye.'

Jack's responses to each garden was much the same – wonder and joy and a boundless Hope that left Aster feeling like he had spent the day lying in a patch of sunlight. Jack loved in particular the fifth garden, a collection of plants that grew in high, often snowy altitudes, and the ninth, a stretch of outback Aster had more or less nicked when he'd wanted a desert garden about two millenia back. They were coming up on the final one, and Jack looked more relaxed than Aster had ever seen him, glowing slightly in the waning light of the day.

'So each one's had some kind of a theme, huh?' Jack asked teasingly, floating on his back and his eyes on the slowly pinking sky. 'First colour, then – what, the beach?'

'Ocean grasses and flowers, yes,' Aster said, grinning.

'Then berries, climbing vine flowers, cold plants, jungle flowers, mushrooms – which is weird, but cool, I guess – medicinal plants, the desert, volcanic plants, and ferns that have been extinct since dinosaurs were around.'

Aster shuddered to remember the massive reptiles, what little he'd seen of them; he was just glad all of the dratted things were gone, though he certainly mourned their deaths. He just wished they all could have been confined to Siberia, or something.

'So what do you even have left to do?' Jack asked, clearly not looking where they were going.

'Turn and have a Captain Cook, Jackie,' Aster said, and Jack did.

Aster had spent a lot of time on this garden, thousands of years tending to it, and Jack seemed to appreciate it the way it deserved. 'Oh, my god,' Jack said, awed and slow. 'It's a forest.'

'One of every kind of tree going back millions of years,' Aster said proudly. 'Lots of them extinct on the up top, but down here, they thrive. Had to grab a couple of seeds out of fossils, but I think it came out just bonzer.'

'Just... oh, my god.'

Aster preened a bit at Jack's disbelief; his favourite garden may have been the first plot, but his pride was the last. Each tree was in the blaze of late spring health, and magic gave each tree its perfect environment. An ancient banyan grew side by side with a thick white birch, black oak beside a giant palm, and so on for – bloody oath, Aster wasn't quite sure anymore. It never seemed to matter, the size of this forest, not as much as each individual tree. And towering in the centre, higher than just about anything else in the Warren, was a massive redwood, easily as thick around as a block and taller than just about any human building. Aster had been tending it since before humans made their first tools.

'It's beautiful, Aster,' Jack said, and Aster felt himself go so red his fur was probably pink. Jack looked over, and his face wore yet another strange expression Aster could neither name nor puzzle out. 'I mean it,' he said. 'It's one of the best things I've ever seen.'

'Well, thank ye,' Aster said, ears flattening as he ducked his head.

'You're embarrassed,' Jack said with delight. 'Holy crap, you're embarrassed! This is the best day _ever_ , oh my god.'

'Shut up, Frostbite,' Aster snapped, but nothing could stop Jack's laughter, or the smile that kept trying to split Aster's face.

 

 

The glowfish in their pond seemed so at peace, Aster thought, but it was an ignorant one. They gleamed and glittered in the night's darkness and never knew there was a world above their water. He wondered if any fish looked upwards, through the water to the stars. He wondered if they would care what the stars were or took them for granted.

He sat in front of the pond and watched the glowfish swim languidly about. The night was thick above him, the moon waxing towards full and casting an incomplete disc on the water's surface; he sat, and he thought.

Clearly something was going on here. He wasn't sure what, exactly, but he felt off-balance all the time now, like the world was spinning faster beneath his back paws than he was used to, and it wasn't a great feeling. He suspected that when he finally figured what was shonky about all this, it would be as obvious as a shag on a rock, but he was still floundering in the dark after the answer. He knew it had to do with the times – of course it did, everything in his life right now revolved around the bleeding things – and it probably had something to do with Jack.

He left the pond with a few short strides and opened a tunnel to his Warren, deep in thought. Running on home, he found himself in the twelfth plot, the forest he'd grown with his own two paws and his own heart's devotion. He walked amongst the trees for a long time – long enough that the Moon sank beneath the horizon, but not long enough that dawn was drawing near – and placed his paw on each one he passed. Like dear friends, they said hello in their own way; leaves brushed past his ears, branches bent towards his paws, and one particularly enthusiastic elm showered him with leaves he'd been meaning to prune for two months now.

He stood beneath a pale willow tree, and kept thinking, paw pressed to her bark. She was unhappy, he realised. Too many trees around, too many things to compete with. She was a solitary sort, and longed to be alone in a garden, to stretch out her branches and droop towards the earth. He was uncertain, at the moment, as to how he would be able to give her the space she needed, but he knew he would try.

_To each thing their heart's desire_ , Aster thought fondly, stroking her bark as he remembered the poem from a book he'd last read before the earth was formed. 'To each thing their heart's desire,' he said to the willow, whose trunk swayed forward in an unfelt breeze, leaning near to hear his words. 'And may they never part from it: / for everything that exists desires / and there is no existence yet that will not strive to attain it / or claim it: / or draw as near as it may, and find peace in the nearness.'

The forest was whispering now, echoing the words to each other and back at Aster as he continued. 'It is the part of the desirous to seek what they wish, / by word or by deed / by thought or by loss: / but so too does the desired play its part / and it is the part of the desired to reach / for what desires it, and what it desires in turn. / For in all things, there are two / and for all things, there is nearness.'

Aster laughed after a moment. 'Bit of a bodgy poem, in me opinion,' he said to the willow, 'but we'll see what we can do –'

It struck him then, what was strange, and had been strange, and would be so for the foreseeable future. He staggered a bit with the realisation, and in his head, there were a jumble of images as he thought it through all at once: the moon as large and yellow as any harvest year, as any September sun, a great spray of clear water, and the willow, sprawling and vast as she deserved to be. The solution to – well, a lot of things, really.

He turned to the east, where there was a clear plain a few acres wide about a click away; it had been empty for a long time, but he'd never been sure what to put there.

'How do ye feel about being the centrepiece for a new plot, miss?' he said to the willow, the design coming together in his mind, and her slender branches and silver leaves shook in excitement.

 

 

'Wow, Bunny, you've kept busy,' Tooth said, fluttering over. Aster sat back on his hind legs, brushing wet dirt from his paws, and smiled at her.

'Flat out like a lizard drinking,' he agreed. 'What's got ye looking for me?'

'I just wanted to see you,' she said, and leaned into the nearest flower, a tall, pale sunflower that only bent the tiniest bit under her weight. 'It's been an exciting summer, hasn't it?'

'It's winter down under, mate, and spring in here,' he reminded her, and returned to carefully picking out the white chicory's deep roots; they had to be pulled out all together and transplanted about four feet away, if he wanted the gradation to look right. 'Suppose it's been going off more than usual, though.'

'Really?' she said, frowning. 'I thought you'd be more – oh, I don't know. Excited. Everything's been fantastic all over the place, especially for you!'

'What do ye mean?' Aster said, pulling the white chicory out of the earth. He cradled it in the bowl of his paws and stood up. 'Sorry, got to put this little one back in the dirt.'

'That's fine,' she said, and followed him as he shuffled over to the left. 'And I mean the past few months! You've been much more social,' she said, and wagged her finger. 'Being alone all the time is bad for you, you know it is. And we're all here for you, no matter what!' She put her hands on her hips. 'It's hard to do that if none of us can find you, though. I'm glad you've been leaving the Warren open.' Her scolding posture melted away as she found another perch on another sunflower, this one even paler than the first. 'Normally you keep it closed pretty tight.'

'Well, I have to, ye know,' he said, and shrugged at her look. 'Keep it open, I mean. No good if ye lot can't grab me when things go bonkers.'

'That's what the aurora is for, and you know it,' she said back, looking deeply amused. 'Admit it, it's just your way of begging for visitors.'

'If I wanted ye to come barging in all the time I'd invite ye,' he muttered absently, and then frowned, turning. 'Wait a second. Didn't ye say no unannounced visits for a year?'

'I sent a note,' she said innocently.

'How long before ye decided to come anyway?'

She looked up at the sky and hummed. 'Oh, about five minutes or so,' she said, and Aster gave up, laughing. She smiled at him peaceably. 'So what's your new project, Aster?'

He gave her a bit of a side-eye for the name, but she ignored it serenely. 'A surprise,' he said.

'For who?'

'For a lot of people, I reckon, once they find out,' he said back, and she rolled her eyes.

'You could just _tell_ me.'

'Some things are better left a mystery,' he said very seriously, purely so that she could shove him and squawk about him trying to usurp the night. He bore it with good humour, pleased with the redirect, and if she had a knowing cast to her gaze, he could ignore it with the same.

 

 

'Lo, Sandy,' Aster said cheerfully. Aster had gone for what was starting to become his weekly night run, and came across the other Guardian just south of Perth. Sandy had waved him over, and flashed a sun that started halfway beneath a little line before rising up, and then a question mark.

'Yer not wrong,' Aster shrugged.

Sandy signed a quick series of images: a stand of trees, a pile of flowers that looked like heliotrope and daylilies, the sun again, but now with a little moon on its face, and last, Aster himself, leaping to and fro. Chasing something.

'That obvious, huh?' Aster said, kneading his forehead with his thumb and forefinger. Hopefully not much more obvious than that, or everything would be ruined.

Sandy gave him a snowflake, and then crossed it out.

'Oh, that's good,' Aster sighed, relaxing. 'Where has the dero been, anyway? Haven't seen him in a week.'

'Oh, I'm around,' Jack said cheerfully from behind him, and Aster yelped before slapping a paw over his mouth. Jack laughed merrily, and flew once, twice around him before coming to a stop beside Sandy. 'Heya, Bun-Bun,' he said, and Aster gave him the hardest glare he could muster.

'Ye could have warned me, mate,' he said to Sandy, who shrugged, then accepted a high five from Jack.

'So what are you looking for me for?' Jack said, squinting at Aster.

'Wasn't really looking for ye,' Aster defended. 'I was out running when I ran into Sandy, and we were having a chinwag, was all.'

Jack nodded, but he wore a smile that was just this side of insufferably smug. 'Of course, Cottontail, of course,' he said, and turned to Sandy. 'So how have you been, Sandy?'

A bright gold thumbs up, and Jack laughed. 'Yeah, me too. It's been great lately.'

Aster snorted. 'I'll leave ye both to yer own chinwag,' he said companionably, and Sandy waved before he took off.

From roof to roof he leapt, before taking to the ground and aiming south, towards the Never Never and the clear winter skies.

'Hey, Aster! Wait up!'

Aster slowed down, and Jack caught up after a minute, skimming above the ground by a few feet. 'How ye going?' Aster asked, darting around a large stone.

'Pretty good,' Jack said, grinning as the speed picked up again and they were all but leaving a dust trail across the bush. 'I've been stuck in Argentina, managing a storm system. It would have been pretty bad if I hadn't reined it in a bit, but now it's all taken care of.' He flew up to avoid a small copse of trees and settled back down at Aster's level. 'And you?'

'I've been keeping meself busy,' Aster said, managing a mid-stride shrug. 'Been quiet in the Warren lately.'

'Aww,' Jack teased. 'You miss me that much, Bun?'

'Like a nipper the sea,' Aster said, keeping his voice flat; he couldn't keep himself from smiling, though, as Jack tried to puzzle the phrase out. 'Course, I was able to get some work done, so.'

'So you did miss me!' Jack said, lighting up in both expression and in truth, glowing faintly in the moonless night.

'London to a brick,' Aster said back, and Jack laughed.

'So what work have you been doing? It's too early for Easter prep,' Jack asked after a moment. They were coming up on another hidden pocket of the world, and Aster veered a little to the right. Jack kept close, near flying on top of him; it was dangerous, what they were doing at this speed. If Aster tripped, or Jack didn't keep to the course precisely, they could end up tangled and scraped up, with more than a few broken bones. It didn't matter. Aster trusted Jack.

'A little bit to go, and she'll be right,' Aster said. 'If you can wait another week, I'll be happy to show ye first.'

'Sounds cool,' Jack said, and they began to slow, until it was little more than a leisurely lope as Aster ducked into the pocket. Jack followed, and drew up in surprise, a sharp breath the only sound he made.

'Beaut, ain't it,' Aster said, smiling. It was a section of the outback that had been long closed to humans and spirits alike, kept only for the rare few Mother Earth decided she trusted; Aster knew that none of the other Guardians, except perhaps Sandy, had ever seen it. Here, there was a deep hole in the earth, dropping down almost to the level of his Warren, and at the bottom was a perfectly round lake, filled with phosphorescent moss and the little glowfish that made the other pond home. The light crept up the walls, gleaming faintly at the surface, and Jack hovered above it, giving off his own shine of joy.

'How do you  _find_ these places, Aster?' Jack asked, voice low.

'There's a lot of beautiful things on Earth,' Aster said, and Jack looked over at him, eyes wide and burning blue. 'More things than I've seen in all me years. Places like this, and as unlike this as you could imagine, Jackie.'

'Can you show me?' Jack asked breathlessly.

Aster chuckled. 'I was planning to,' he said, and smiled at Jack. 'For now, though, this one's good for us, yeah?'

'Yeah,' Jack said faintly, and his eyes never left Aster's face.

 

 

Aster patted the earth around the last forget-me-not, and stood. He looked around him, and carefully judged each bloom, each leaf, each arranged blade of grass.

'Perfect,' he said, and knew it was as close as he'd ever get.

 

 

'Hey, Cottontail!' Jack called. He hovered over Cairo, and spun a bit, showering more snow on the city.

'Bit north for this time of year, yeah?' Aster called back, bounding over.

'I told you,' Jack said cheerfully once Aster had reached him, 'One of my greatest joys in life is pissing off weathermen.'

'It's the little things,' Aster agreed, and Jack was aglow as he looked at Aster.

'So what's got  _you_ in these parts?' Jack asked, once the glow had dimmed a little bit. 'It's a bit late for you, right?'

'Or early, if ye're looking at it rightways,' Aster shrugged. 'I was looking for ye.'

The glow renewed itself, Jack's skin shining like he was holding the moon in his chest – or the sunrise, Aster supposed. 'It's done?'

'Reckon,' Aster confirmed. 'Ye ready to go, or do ye need to make the weathermen cry some more, ye show pony?'

'I'm all set,' Jack said, and grinned. 'Race you there?'

'Now what have I told ye,' Aster said, and felt a bit of the night in him, a bit of the strangeness that he was learning maybe everyone had. Even a Day like him. 'Ye don't want to race a rabbit, mate.'

'You're not even a rabbit, though!' Jack shouted after him as he dropped into a tunnel, and Aster laughed, long and loud, as he sprinted towards the Warren. He somersaulted neatly as he popped out of the tunnel and landed in a clear spot of the first garden plot, the brilliant colours of the flowers washed out by the distant oncoming light of dawn.

'Cheater,' Jack accused, tumbling out of the sky – a little too close to Aster, who was forced to brace him with his paws on Jack's upper arms.

'How was that cheating?' Aster demanded, setting Jack back firmly on the earth. He didn't let go just yet, and Jack swayed a little nearer before finding his balance.

'You know,' Jack said after a moment, 'I'm not sure.'

Aster rolled his eyes and let go. 'Ye want to see it, then?'

'Definitely,' Jack said, brightening.

Aster led him through the gardens, intentionally building up some suspense. Jack was impatient to see it, but Aster bided his time: he wanted the moment to be right.

When Jack sighed as they crested the last hillock, Aster knew he had succeeded.

Below them was a wide flower garden, looping and delicate; the beds were thin and interconnected, coming to a series of twenty-one sharp points that marked the outer edge. The pattern spiderwebbed its way across, only interrupted by a dark trail that spiralled towards the centre. The flowers went from a deep blue in the west to white to pink and orange in the east, where the sun was rising, the sky mirroring the earth in tone and warmth.

Like a sentinel, standing in the middle with her branches wide and looming, was the massive willow. Her leaves glowed golden in the early dawn light, and beneath her, invisible from here, was a white pavilion centred around a small spring, kept in a white marble bowl. He'd never known the spring was there, hiding in the blank plain, until he'd begun digging for a bed of white baby asters. He wondered if it had been lying there dormant, or if it had come into being when he finally turned his attention to the plain. He supposed it didn't matter – it made a lovely counterpoint to the willow, and provided water for the flower beds.

It was beautiful, the spring and the willow and the garden all together, but tamer than most any other plot Aster kept. Perhaps he wouldn't have done so if the garden was just for its own sake; perhaps he'd have let it grow wild, let it spill over the neatly arranged borders and sprawl outwards in the stretch of life so apparent in his other plots. It wasn't for its own sake, though, or for his own enjoyment, and he felt that the tameness of it might appeal better to Jack.

Jack turned back to Aster from his study of the garden with a look on his face that Aster finally knew the name of.

'It's a snowflake,' he said. 'But it's the dawn too, isn't it.'

'Too right,' Aster said back quietly.

'It's for me?'

'Who else would it be for, ye great gumby?'

'Aster...' Jack said, and scowled. 'Goddamnit, couldn't you have waited?'

'What?' Aster said, stepping back. Had he got it wrong? Oh, god, he was such a mongrel, how could he have judged this so badly –

'I had it all planned out!' Jack was saying, waving his arms about frantically. 'It was a great plan, too! But noooo, you had to go and ruin it by giving me a fucking  _garden_ ! A  _**garden** _ , Aster! How am I supposed to top that?!' He sucked in a breath of air, and Aster broke in.

'Wait, ye've lost me, mate. Do ye like it, or do I owe ye an apology?'

'Do I  _like_ it, he asks!' Jack shouted, storming over, and it took everything Aster had to not step back again. ' _Do I like it_ ? Are you fucking with me – of course I like it! I love it! I can't believe you did this for me – I am so  _angry_ , you asshole –'

'Still lost,' Aster said faintly.

'Then let me explain,' Jack snapped furiously, and tackled Aster to the ground. Before Aster could say or do anything in his defence, Jack kissed him hard.

'Oh,' Aster said, as Jack ripped himself away and kneeled over Aster's chest, panting like he'd finished a marathon.

'Oh? Is that all you have to say for yourself, 'oh'!?' Jack said, poking him in the chest.

'Oh, thank god,' Aster amended, and wrapped a paw around Jack's hand, dragging him down. Jack went without even a token protest, burrowing into Aster's arms, exactly where he belonged.

 

 

'Don't think I didn't know what ye were doing,' Aster said, nosing at Jack's throat.

'What do – do you mean,' Jack demanded, wrapping his arms around Aster's neck and holding on for dear life, kissing the edges of his ears, his eyebrows, anything within reach.

'The circling,' Aster murmured, and bit gently at Jack's collarbone. Jack jerked in his hold and he licked the spot soothingly, leaving Jack to shudder out a sigh. 'The showing off. The racing. Looking at me flowers and making me a storm.'

'Hey,' Jack said indignantly, 'I really do just like flowers –'

'Ye could have found flowers anywhere in the world,' Aster pointed out. 'Ye still came for mine.'

'Yeah, well,' Jack huffed, 'Yours are the best.'

'Too right they are,' Aster replied, and rolled over, pinning Jack to the grass. Jack's eyes went wide, and he set his hands on Aster's shoulders.

'Are you – are we –' Jack said, voice catching and a brilliant Hope rising in him.

'If ye want,' Aster shrugged. 'I'm good with whatever pops into yer pretty head.'

'Shut up,' Jack said, going pink. 'But – we can?'

'Like I said,' Aster said, pursing his lips and pressing a kiss to Jack's nose, 'if ye want.'

Jack stared up at him, and then a smile spread across his face like the encroaching dawn. 'You have no idea how bad I want,' Jack said, voice low, and slid his hands up from Aster's shoulders to hold his face. His hands were chill, but not really cold; Aster thought about other places they would touch, and swallowed hard. Jack tilted his head up, and pulled Aster down on top of him.

Aster worried for a moment that he was crushing Jack, but he seemed to like the weight. He sighed pleasantly into Aster's mouth, at least, and stroked the cheekbones his thumbs found beneath the fur. Aster kissed him gently; humans kissed strange, he knew, heads tilted to the side and mouths open, but Jack seemed content to kiss head on, his thinner, longer nose brushing against Aster's flatter one, his mouth closed except for when he sighed. Then, his tongue swiped out and licked at Aster's top lip, and Aster began to understand why humans kissed openmouthed.

Like the sun rising behind them, warmth built up between their bodies, until Jack was rocking up against Aster's hips and Aster's cock had slipped out of his sheath. 'I wondered where you were hiding that,' Jack said quietly, and Aster swallowed again.

This Jack was all confidence and want and roaming hands, fingers stroking through Aster's fur and finding spots that he'd never known were aching to be touched. He wondered why he'd ever thought Jack would be different, especially with this. His cool hands crept lower and lower, and then braced themselves on Aster's hips.

With a quick shove and a burst of air, he flipped them over once again, and Aster found himself staring up at a wicked, feline grin. 'Hey,' Jack said, and kissed him once more for good measure. 'I like the idea of doing this here, and maybe some other time, we will,' and there was no maybe, Aster was certain. 'But I'd like to do this where you sleep, where you live. Your bed, if you do beds.'

'It's a bit more like a nest,' Aster said, throat long dry, 'but if that's what ye want, Snowdrop.'

'Snowdrop,' Jack said, tilting his head back. 'I like that so much better than Frostbite.'

Aster swallowed a third time, and Jack looked down again. 'Come on, Bunny,' he said, and deftly wrapped his legs around Aster's middle. 'Take me home.'

That undid him.

He had no memory of how he got to his den – how the hell he stood with an erect dick and Jack wrapped around his waist would never be clear – but there they were, and Jack was shoving Aster back onto the pile of soft blankets and pillows while he undid his pants. Aster pulled the sweatshirt and the undershirt off in one go, and Jack  _growled_ because it meant he had to stop trying to unlace his pants for a moment. Aster jerked at the sound, his cock twitching, and Jack grinned at him with all the strangeness of night and the brilliance of day.

'Oh, the things I want to  _do_ to you, Aster,' Jack said, and finally kicked free of his pants. His own cock hung heavy and red against the white curls between his legs, a pleasant enough size, and it filled Aster's palm neatly when he got a paw around it. Jack sighed and rolled his hips into the touch before taking Aster's knees in hand and pulling them to either side, settling himself between them like he'd always belonged there.

'Got any slick?' Jack asked, kissing the corner of Aster's mouth and rubbing their hips together, and it took Aster a moment or two to find words, mostly because  _holy dooley how did Jack know words like that_ .

'I – er, in the night – in the nightstand,' Aster managed to get out. Words had never been his strong suit during sex, and it had been  _yonks_ since anyone had touched him, much less with the self-assurance and, god, love that Jack did.

'One sec,' Jack said, and crooked a finger; the drawer opened gently, pulled on by a curl of wind, and the little bottle of pale green oil floated over into Jack's palm. The effortless magic was both impressive and more than a little mind-blowing, and made Aster's mouth dry again.

'What's this scent?' Jack asked as he twisted the cap off the bottle.

'Rosemary,' Aster said, grateful for the single word answer.

'It's nice,' Jack said, and dribbled some oil on his fingers before reaching down.

It had been even longer since anyone had done this to him, and it took a moment for Aster to relax into the touch, to recognise it as something enjoyable versus something strange. He pressed back onto Jack's finger, and watched Jack's face, who watched what he was doing with a focus that Aster had only seen when Jack had built the storm.

'You're okay with this?' Jack said, falling still and looking up. 'We're shaped pretty different. I wouldn't want to make you feel weird. We can do something else.'

Aster looked down at Jack's cock. Thick and a heavy red that darkened to near purple the higher you went, it had a strange head, flaring out before rejoining the shaft. Aster looked back up, and took a deep breath at the look on Jack's face. 'I reckon,' he said slowly, trying to be careful of the words, 'that the different shape might be agreeable.'

'Oh?' And now Jack's eyes were darkening.

'Yeah,' Aster said, and pressed back onto Jack's finger again. 'Oh, absolutely.'

'You're going to drive me crazy,' Jack whispered, and began to move his hand again.

A second and third finger soon followed, and Aster realised what Jack was gently probing for. 'A – a little higher up,' he said, trying to talk around his heart, which was up in his throat. 'Ye might not be able to reach with yer fingers.'

'Damn,' Jack said, sounding disappointed.

'I think ye'll be able to reach with something else,' Aster said, and rocked back on Jack's fingers emphatically. 'Anytime today,' he added when Jack's mouth fell open.

'Okay, you asked for it,' Jack said, grinning wide, and removed his hand. Aster groaned at the loss, but it was quickly replaced by something a little wider and more solid pressing on the skin just outside. 'You still cool with this?' Jack asked, pausing.

In answer, Aster rolled his eyes and levered himself up, pressing onto Jack's cock with a careful manoeuvre. It took a little work – since the head was wider than the shaft – but it wasn't that difficult in the end, and felt satisfying as hell when it slipped inside. Jack closed his eyes and breathed hard, but slid forward as Aster relaxed back onto his nest, slotting his hips between Aster's legs.

Jack's cock was warmer than the rest of him, but it was still a little cool, and the sensation was ridiculously stimulating, Aster realised. And then he felt the head of Jack's cock catch on his prostate, and he moaned.

'Are you okay?' Jack asked, pausing and looking at Aster with wide eyes. 'I mean, I've got the general idea, but I've never done this before – did I hurt you?'

'Ye've got the – ye've what?' Aster said, propping himself up on his elbows and staring, managing to ignore with a truly herculean effort what the motion did to him. 'This is yer first time?'

'Well, yeah,' Jack said, his hands tight in the fur around Aster's hips and his voice more than a touch self-conscious. 'I haven't really found anyone else I'd want to do this with.'

'Ye – oh, Jack,' Aster said, and rocked up onto Jack's cock again. The head rubbed against his prostate once more, and his head dropped back. 'Yer doing just fine,' he choked out. 'Oh, god –'

'Okay, okay,' Jack laughed, but it sounded a little ragged at the edges. He pressed the rest of the way in, which was a matter of maybe half an inch, and then they stared at each other, hipbone to hipbone and eye to eye.

Experimentally, Jack withdrew and shoved back in a short thrust, and Aster snapped his hips up in answer.

'Oh,  _fuck me_ , that is good,' Aster groaned, and Jack laughed again.

He was gentle in a way Aster thought he should have expected, at least in the beginning; teasing, shallow thrusts and soft hands that trailed down Aster's sides and held his thighs tightly. Aster just held on, paws flung over his head and grasping at the thick tree roots that dotted the walls.

On each stroke, in and out, Jack's head would rub Aster just right, and he marvelled that they were so perfectly matched – the length exactly what it needed to be to always be in contact with his prostate, and god, but he let Jack know it, groaning and moaning like a two-bit tart.

Jack's hand brushed past Aster's cock and Aster yelped, spilling over himself with a whiteout of his vision.

'Oh, man, Aster,' Jack said, freezing in place. 'You're – you're so  _warm_ , god –'

'I'm not done yet,' Aster panted, and jerked his hips up, slamming against Jack's as his cock began to stir again. 'Come on, don't stop –'

Jack's hips stuttered forward, and he gasped out, 'Oh, fuck, Aster, do you have any idea how many times I've  _dreamed of you saying that_ , keep  _saying_ that –'

'Don't stop, don't stop, don't stop,' Aster chanted, when he could form words around his harsh breathing and the brilliant heat of Jack's Hope, and Jack didn't.

Twice more Aster came – once without Jack's hand at all, and the other with Jack's fingers sliding and gripping through his own sweat, whispering, 'Come on, Aster, for me, with me, come on, come –'

and he threw his head back and near  _wailed_ with the weight of it, the lightness, the heat and the cool wetness that bloomed inside as Jack shouted with a hilariously high voice and collapsed against his chest, the mess between them sticky and disgusting and absolutely  _delightful_ .

'I can feel your Joy,' Jack whispered, as if he couldn't quite believe it. 'It's like – like a breeze on hot skin, like water, like – like –'

'Like Joy,' Aster finished, and earned a kiss for his trouble.

 

 

After a moment, he cleared his throat. 'I hope ye know,' he said slowly, 'that the garden was, well...'

'An engagement gift?' Jack said, grinning widely. His hair was utterly askew, his mouth bright red, and his eyes looked at Aster like he made the world worth living in. 'Oh, yeah, I knew. Blew mine out of the water, you _asshole_.' He punched Aster in the shoulder, but it was a loving thing.

'Ye were planning the same – really?' Aster said, blinking.

'Course I was,' Jack said, like it was a little thing he was admitting and not as wonderful as it was. 'I was going to take you to a mountaintop, declare my undying love, and then give you my gift.'

'Which was?'

'Well,' Jack said, going a little pink. 'I kind of... well, it's dumb.'

'I doubt that, Snowdrop,' Aster said, picking up Jack's hand and pressing his lips to the pale wrist.

'I wanted to show you what my frost has been doing for months now,' Jack said. 'Completely without my control. It keeps making flowers, Aster, and leaves and vines, like my magic knew way before I did what was going on.'

Aster stared at Jack, and abruptly it came together in his mind with all the force of an earthquake. 'Do ye understand what that means?'

'Sort of?' Jack shrugged. 'Sandy said to ask you or North, but you were the obvious choice. I know it's doing it because I love you, right?'

Aster pulled Jack down to lie fully atop him, nuzzling every bit of skin he could reach. 'That too,' he said, and it was with a rough voice. 'How long?'

'About eight months, maybe? It started back in February, I think,' Jack said, a little muffled through Aster's fur. 'Why?'

'Oh, Jack,' Aster said, 'I've always been a bit short of a quid when it comes to this kind of thing. I'm sorry I kept ye waiting.'

'What do you mean?'

'It means that me magic and yer magic were affected by each other's feelings,' he whispered. 'It's why there were flowers in yer frost, and why I was so curious about the night. February was when I started thinking the lot of ye were acting odd. It never woulda happened if it weren't mutual, I'm so sorry that ye ever had to worry that it wasn't. If I wasn't so thick –'

'Hey, hey,' Jack said, struggling back and looking Aster square in the eye. 'None of that. If it hadn't happened, I wouldn't have figured it out for ages. Thank god that we've got a built in signal system, yeah?'

'Too right,' Aster agreed, and leaned up for a kiss. Jack gave it to him, and the movement caused him to slip inside a little deeper, which was when Aster realised Jack was hard again.

'Sorry,' Jack said, a little breathless. 'Immortal stuck in a teenage body, I'm always going to –'

That was when Jack realised Aster had gone hard too.

'Oh,' Jack whispered. 'Oh!'

'Round two?' Aster said, grinning, and Jack laughed.

'Oh, I'm going to like you,' Jack said through his mirth, and Aster laughed back, even as Jack began to move with him, both in the rooting, and past the dawn into the clear shining day.

 

 

Jack lounged on the white stone pavilion that lay beneath the great willow, and looked up through the leaves towards the mid-afternoon sky. A little ways off, through the gentle burbling of the spring in its fountain, he could hear Aster tending to the sunrise garden, moving plants around, tweaking the colours, muttering under his breath. As far as Jack was concerned, there was nothing so wonderful as the days he spent with his uptight, grumpy old rabbit.

The last few nights of autumn could go hang.

 

**Author's Note:**

> aggresivelyflirtatious!Jack is a problem for me now


End file.
